Saturday, December 3, 2011

When it comes to pesticides, children are among the most vulnerable. Pound for pound, they drink 2.5 times more water, eat 3-4 times more food, and breathe 2 times more air. They therefore absorb a higher concentration of pesticides than adults.

Infants and children also face unique exposure because of how they interact with the world: they crawl on the ground and put things in their mouths — including their hands. They also face exposure during critical windows in the womb and via breast milk.

Developing Brains & Bodies

Since they are growing so quickly, infants and young children are more susceptible to the effects of pesticide exposure than adults. Their developing brains and bodies are in the midst of complex and fragile developmental processes that regulate tissue growth and organ development — and these developmental processes can be irreversibly derailed by pesticide exposure.Drawings by preschoolers exposed to pesticides (Valley) compared to those by preschoolers not exposed (Foothills). See "Developmental Delay" below.

Research indicates that children exposed to pesticides either in utero, or during other critical periods face significant health risks including higher incidence of:

Birth defects

Neurodevelopmental delays & cognitive impairment

Childhood brain cancers

Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD)

Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (AD/HD)

Endocrine disruption

Many of the worst pesticides, known as “persistent organic pollutants,” or POPs, contaminate our water and soil for years. They move on the wind and in streams, rivers and oceans and concentrate as they move up the food chain. Other pesticides are so widely and heavily used that they contamine our food and water supplies (chlorpyrifos and atrazine are good examples).

So, while farmer and farmworker's children bear some of the highest risks, pesticides contaminate the environment and permeate the food supply such that even kids in city cafeterias face daily exposure.

Health Effects: The State of the Science

Birth Defects :: This April 2009 study reports that birth defect rates in the United States are highest among women conceiving in the spring and summer, a time period correlated with increased levels of pesticides in surface water.

Developmental Neurotoxicity/IQ reduction :: Fetal and childhood exposures to widely used organophosphate pesticides, especially chlorpyrifos, have raised concerns about developmental neurotoxicity. In 2011, several independent studies documented cognitive effects of in uteru dietary exposure, including significant IQ reduction. A study of Yaqui Indian children in Mexico found that an array of impaired brain and nervous system functions, including social behaviors and the ability to draw, are correlated to pesticide exposure during development.

Brain Development :: Many developmental effects are not measurable at birth, or even later in life, because brain and nervous system disturbances are expressed in terms of how an individual behaves and functions. Reviewing the literature on pesticide exposure at various points in neurological development, this article finds that current pesticide risk assessment strategies are ill-equipped to measure or protect against the many kinds of exposure faced by developing fetuses, infants and children.

Childhood Brain Cancer :: Brain cancer is the second most common type of cancer in children, and it has been on the rise, but why it develops remains unclear. This February 2009 study finds that children who live in homes where their parents use pesticides are twice as likely to develop brain cancer versus those that live in residences in which no pesticides are used.

Autism Spectrum Disorder :: Researchers found a sixfold increase in risk factor for autism spectrum disorders (ASD) for children of women who were exposed to organocholorine pesticides, this study was one of the first to link in utero pesticide exposure to ASD.

Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder& dietary pesticide exposure :: A May 2010 study out of Harvard shows that even tiny, allowable amounts of a common pesticide class can have dramatic effects on brain chemistry. Organophosphate pesticides (OP’s) are among the most widely used pesticides in the U.S., they work by interfering with brain signaling in insects. OPs have long been understood to be particularly toxic for children, but this is the first study to examine their effects across a representative population with average levels of exposure.

Acta Pediatrica, Vol. 98, Issue 4, 2009

Developmental Effects Beyond Neurotoxicity: Immediate & Delayed-Onset Effects on Heart & Liver Function :: The fetal and neonatal neurotoxicity of chlorpyrifos (CPF) and related insecticides is a major concern. Developmental effects of CPF involve mechanisms over and above cholinesterase inhibition, notably events in cell signaling that are shared by nonneural targets. This study finds that the developmental toxicity of CPF extends beyond the nervous system, to include cell signaling cascades that are vital to heart and liver functioning.

Low Birth Weight :: Pregnant women in upper Manhattan who were heavily exposed to two common insecticides had smaller babies than their neighbors. Recent restrictions on the two substances quickly lowered exposure and increased babies' size.

Friday, December 2, 2011

Don’t drink the weed killer: Atrazine taints rural groundwater

Photo: T.P. MartinsIf you want to understand all that is wrong with our government's environmental safety priorities, you need only look at the sad story of the weed killer atrazine. Despite the fact that study after study has demonstrated its dangers, it remains one of the most commonly used herbicides in the U.S. -- to the tune of 76 million pounds a year.

Atrazine is highly volatile -- which means not only can it leach into groundwater through the fields, but it can become airborne and drift into waterways. Much of the Midwest's water supply contains detectable levels of the stuff. I know a Midwesterner who will proudly declare -- tongue firmly in cheek -- "we Iowans drink atrazine for breakfast!"

Laughing aside, Atrazine is an endocrine disruptor that also appears to cause cancer. The European Union, concerned about its toxicity, banned the chemical in 2004. But here in the U.S. you'll continue to find reports like this one in Brownfield, an industry trade magazine, that declares that atrazine "is still a viable option for producers to manage weed problems."

Of course, Sygenta maintains there is no risk to humans or wildlife from atrazine -- the company even put out a video touting its benefits. Yet a pair of studies have just been released that even the EPA can't ignore.

The first, appearing in the Journal of Steroid Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, is a review by a team of 22 international scientists examining a broad range of studies conducted in the laboratory and in the field that examines atrazine's status as an endocrine disruptor in mammals, fish, and amphibians. Their analysis confirmed that atrazine is dangerous at levels the EPA considers "safe." Dangerous how? Like this (via ScienceDaily):

... Atrazine exposure can change the expression of genes involved in hormone signaling, interfere with metamorphosis, inhibit key enzymes that control estrogen and androgen production, skew the sex ratio of wild and laboratory animals (toward female) and otherwise disrupt the normal reproductive development and functioning of males and females.

Oh, and it also suppresses immune function.

Perhaps animal studies don't faze you. (I mean, who cares about hermaphroditic fish or frogs that switch sexes?) Well, maybe this study, published in Environmental Research, will. Researchers from Colorado State University and the Vermont Department of Health looked at women in farm towns in Illinois and Vermont. And they found that simply drinking a couple glasses a day of tap water with detectable but low levels of atrazine was enough to disrupt a woman's menstrual cycle and her hormone levels. According to the article in Environmental Health News:

The women from Illinois farm towns were nearly five times more likely to report irregular periods than the Vermont women, and more than six times as likely to go more than six weeks between periods. In addition, the Illinois women had significantly lower levels of estrogen during an important part of the menstrual cycle.
Tap water in the Illinois communities had double the concentration of atrazine in the Vermont communities' water. Nevertheless, the water in both states was far below the federal drinking water standard currently enforced by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

And the more glasses of water the women drank, the more screwed up their hormones became.

All the usual caveats that accompany a single scientific study should apply. But as the first study I mentioned demonstrated, there is more than ample evidence that atrazine poses a serious health hazard. And this latest research suggests the danger of exposure at levels Americans -- especially in the Midwest -- ingest on a daily basis.

Now, the EPA is in the midst of a review of atrazine's safety -- and the reality of the chemical's toxicity is leaking out. As Mother Jones noted, an independent panel convened by the agency to examine the herbicide's cancer risk provided "a list of cancers for which there is ‘suggestive evidence of carcinogenic potential': ovarian cancer, non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, hairy-cell leukemia, and thyroid cancer" -- with the evidence for a connection to thyroid cancer singled out as "strong."

Despite that evidence, however, the panel's final statement was the milquetoast recommendation that the EPA in essence alter its atrazine warning from "unlikely to be carcinogenic to humans" to "inadequate information to assess carcinogenic potential." Um. Really? That's progress? Because other than that linguistic alteration, the EPA plans no action any time soon (a fact that demonstrates the massive pressure they must be under from the chemical industry).

Damn Syngenta's profits. There's simply no excuse for the continued use of this chemical. Yes, it might make operations simpler for mega-corn farmers, but at what cost? After all, Europe may have plenty of problems, but failed corn harvests due to a seven-year-old atrazine ban isn't one of them.

So, can someone explain to me why the needs of a single company and the convenience of a group of industrial farmers outweigh the health of millions -- yes, millions -- of Americans? Anyone?

A 17-year veteran of both traditional and online media, Tom is a founder and Executive Director of the Food & Environment Reporting Network and a Contributing Writer at Grist covering food and agricultural policy. Tom's long and winding road to food politics writing passed through New York, Boston, the San Francisco Bay Area, Florence, Italy and Philadelphia (which has a vibrant progressive food politics and sustainable agriculture scene, thank you very much). In addition to Grist, his writing has appeared online in the American Prospect, Slate, the New York Times and The New Republic. He is on record as believing that wrecking the planet is a bad idea. Source: http://www.readersupportednews.org/off-site-news-section/49-49/8687-dont-drink-the-weed-killer

Documents Link Coke to Grand Canyon Plastic Bottle Reversal

Secret Decision to Block Single-Use Bottle Bans throughout National Park System

WASHINGTON - December 2 - A major bottler used corporate gifts and ties to national park fundraisers to influence the National Park Service (NPS) Director, according to documents obtained by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER). The gift prompted the Director to issue an order stopping Grand Canyon National Park from going forward with a long-planned ban on sale of individual plastic water bottles just days before it went into effect. This June NPS Director Jon Jarvis went further, directing, without public announcement, that no park may eliminate plastic water bottle sales in order to preserve “consumer choice” – the rallying cry used by commercial bottlers.

When asked about PEER charges that the National Park Foundation relayed concerns by the Coca Cola Company, a major sponsor of the Foundation (the official fundraising arm of NPS), about the impending January 1, 2011 Grand Canyon plastic bottle ban at, Jarvis issued a blanket denial, saying:

“My decision to hold off the ban was not influenced by Coke, but rather the service-wide implications to our concessions contracts, and frankly the concern for public safety in a desert park.”

Documents obtained by PEER after filing of a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit tell a different story:

Lobbying by National Park Foundation President Neil Mulholland on behalf of Coca Cola, a major bottled water maker, led directly to Jarvis’ decision with Jarvis himself writing “While I applaud the intent, there are going to be consequences, since Coke is a major sponsor of our recycling efforts”;

This summer, according to an email from his lead staff person, “the Director’s view is NOT ban sale of bottled water, but to go the choice route” (emphasis in original). Records indicate another dozen parks, including Yellowstone and Death Valley, had been considering bottle bans; and

Internal park memos touted the clear environmental and economic benefits of phasing out plastic water bottles. Even an internal study by Nestle, another major bottler, conceded tap water is the preferred alternative to bottled on a lifecycle basis.

Significantly the documents did not show that public safety was a consideration at all. It was not even a discussion item at a January 2011 summit with bottlers, concessionaires and park managers. In fact the only item added to the draft agenda was to expand discussion of bottler activities. Following that meeting, NPS research assignments revolved principally around economic issues; again, safety was not a factor.

Jarvis’ expressed concern about “public safety in a desert park” appears especially farfetched given that Grand Canyon had spent more than $300,000 installing “watering stations” and made reusable containers available. Zion National Park, a desert park, banned plastic bottles more than two years ago with no reported ill effects. Not even Coca Cola contends its products are needed for public safety.

“Consumer choice is for shopping malls, not national parks,” Ruch added. “National parks are supposed to be managed for the preservation of majestic resources not vendors’ profit margins.”

Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) is a national alliance of local state and federal resource professionals. PEER's environmental work is solely directed by the needs of its members. As a consequence, we have the distinct honor of serving resource professionals who daily cast profiles in courage in cubicles across the country.

What Drugs Was Your Thanksgiving Turkey On?

Antibiotics and other drugs are common in the turkey that thousands of Americans eat every day.

So far, 2011 has not been a great year for turkey producers. In May, an article in Clinical Infectious Diseases reported that half of U.S. meat from major grocery chains--turkey, beef, chicken and pork--harborsantibiotic resistant staph germs commonly called MRSA. Turkey had twice and even three times the MRSA of all other meats, in another study.

In June, Pfizer announced it was ending arsenic-containing chicken feed which no one realized they were eating anyway, but its arsenic-containing Histostat, fed to turkeys, continues. Poultry growers use inorganic arsenic, a recognized carcinogen, for "growth promotion, feed efficiency and improved pigmentation," says the FDA. Yum.

And in August, Cargill Value Added Meats, the nation's third-largest turkey processor, recalled 36 million pounds of ground turkey because of a salmonella outbreak, linked to one death and 107 illnesses in 31 states. Even as it closed its Springdale, Arkansas plant, steam cleaned its machinery and added "two additional anti-bacterial washes" to its processing operations, 185,000 more pounds were recalled the next month from the same plant.

Since the mad cow and Chinese melamine scandals of the mid 2000's, a lot more people think about the food their food ate than before. But fewer people think about the drugs their food ingested. Food animal drugs seldom rate Capitol Hill hearings which is just fine with Big Pharma animals divisions since if people knew the antibiotics, heavy metals, growth promotants, vaccines, anti-parasite drugs and feed additives used on the farm, they would lose their appetite. Besides, people aren't Animal Pharma's primary customers anyway and the long term safety of animals drugs isn't an issue, since patients are supposed to die.

One of the late Sen.Ted Kennedy's last legislative fights was about the overuse of livestock antibiotics. "It seems scarcely believable that these precious medications could be fed by the ton to chickens and pigs," he wrote in a bill called the Preservation of Antibiotics for Medical Treatment Act of 2007 (PAMTA) which has yet to pass. "These precious drugs aren't even used to treat sick animals. They are used to fatten pigs and speed the growth of chickens. The result of this rampant overuse is clear: meat contaminated with drug-resistant bacteria sits on supermarket shelves all over America," said Kennedy.

Because antibiotics make animals use feed more efficiently so they eat less and control disease in confinement farming's packed conditions at the same time, they are practically the fifth food group. On a turkey farm with five million hens, antibiotics would save almost 2,000 tons of feed a year, says an article in a poultry journal.

And when the FDA tried to ban cephalosporins in 2008, one type of antibiotic crucial for treating salmonella in children, it became apparent just what Kennedy was up against. Two months after the FDA announced a hearing about a cephalosporin "Order of Prohibition" in agriculture, the regulatory action had morphed into a "Hearing to Review the Advances In Animal Health Within The Livestock Industry" thanks to lobbyists from the egg, chicken, turkey, milk, pork and cattle industries.

"Order of Prohibition"... "Hearing to Review the Advances In Animal Health Within The Livestock Industry," same idea, right? At the House Subcommittee on Livestock, Dairy, and Poultry hearings [PDF], the National Turkey Federation's Michael Rybolt defended antibiotics as a cost savings to consumers. "The increased costs to raise turkeys without antibiotics is real," he said. "Today at retail outlets here in the D.C. market, a conventionally raised turkey costs $1.29 per pound. A similar whole turkey that was produced without antibiotics costs $2.29 per pound. With the average consumer purchasing a 15 pound whole turkey, that would mean there would be $15 tacked on to their grocery bill."

Conventionally grown turkeys are even a better deal when you consider the cost of antibiotics!

And, antibiotic-based turkey farming is downright green, said Rybolt, calling 227 acre turkey operations, "small family farms." Without them, more land would be needed to grow crops and house the animals because of the "decrease in density." And, with 175,550 more tons of feed needed, there would be "an increase in manure."

When the FDA capitulated to industry and turned the cephalosporin prohibition into a salute to animal "advances," former Kansas governor and former dairyman John Carlin, asked, "What changed in less than five months? Certainly the problem hasn't gone away."

This month, the FDA also rejected petitions to ban human antibiotics like penicillins, tetracyclines and sulfonamides in livestock filed by the Center for Science in the Public Interest, Environmental Defense, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Public Health Association, Food Animal Concerns Trust (FACT), and the Union of Concerned scientists, some filed over 12 years ago. Why? "FDA cannot withdraw approval of a new animal drug until the legally-mandated process," said an FDA spokesman. The process includes an "evidentiary hearing," perhaps like the cephalosporin advances.

Of course germs in turkey and other meat, even antibiotic resistant germs, are neutralized by cooking--but drug residues are not. A report last year from the USDA's inspector general accuses U.S. slaughterhouses of releasing products to the public with excessive drug levels in them and charges that, "The effects of these residues on human beings who consume such meat are a growing concern."

Nor are the antibiotics just in the meat! Scientists at the University of Minnesotafound antibiotic residues in corn, green onions and cabbage after growing them on soil fertilized with livestock manure. The drugs siphoned right up from the soil in just six weeks.

A quick look at the Code of Federal Regulations for turkey drugs does not whet your appetite for Thanksgiving. There are several arsenic turkey drugs approved to provide an, "increased rate of weight gain and improved feed efficiency," say the official guidelines. But they are also "dangerous for ducks, geese, and dogs," and must be discontinued, "5 days before slaughtering animals for human consumption to allow elimination of the drug from edible tissues." Whew.

Halofuginone, another drug given to turkeys to kill pathogens, "is toxic to fish and aquatic life" and "an irritant to eyes and skin," says the Federal Code. "Avoid contact with skin, eyes, or clothing" and "Keep out of lakes, ponds, and streams." Bon appetit. Drug-based farming has cut the time to "grow" an animal almost in half while doubling the market size of the animal itself. For example, chickens were once slaughtered at fourteen weeks, weighing two pounds and are now slaughtered at seven weeks, weighing four and six pounds.

But the Brave New food techniques come at a price because the animals' organs can not always keep up with the metabolic frenzy. Birds "fed and managed in such a way that they are growing rapidly," are at risk of sudden death from cardiac problems and aortic rupture, say poultry scientists.

Growth drugs in turkeys may also "result in leg weakness or paralysis," says the Federal Code, a side effect that a turkey slaughterhouse worker reports firsthand. Many turkeys arrive at the House of Raeford, in Raeford, NC with legs broken or dislocated, he told me in an interview and, "When you try to remove them from their crates, their legs twist completely around, limp and offering no resistance." The turkeys, "must have been in a lot of pain," says the worker, but they don't cry out. "In fact the only sound as you hang them, he says, is the "trucks being washed out to go back and get a new load."

The undercover employee's reports of the "live hanger" culture at the House of Raeford, in which workers pulled the heads and legs off turkeys when they were stuck in crates and worse, led to Denny's suspending its business from Raeford, the nation's seventh largest turkey producer. The slaughterhouse is also infamous for a chlorine spill that killed a worker in 2003, an ammonia spill that evacuated two towns the next year and a murdered worker in 2006.

Still, the mother of all turkey drugs is the asthma-like drug ractopamine, marketed as the "Medicated Tom Turkey Feed" Topmax. Approved for turkeys only two years ago, figures for Topmax use in turkeys are not yet available but the same drug is now used in 45 percent of U.S. pigs and 30 percent of ration-fed cattle.

There are two reasons ractopamine has raised safety questions. One is that itslabel reads, "WARNING: The active ingredient in Topmax, ractopamine hydrochloride, is a beta-adrenergic agonist. Individuals with cardiovascular disease should exercise special caution to avoid exposure. Not for use in humans. Keep out of the reach of children. The Topmax 9 formulation (Type A Medicated Article) poses a low dust potential under usual conditions of handling and mixing. When mixing and handling Topmax, use protective clothing, impervious gloves, protective eye wear, and a NIOSH-approved dust mask. Operators should wash thoroughly with soap and water after handling. If accidental eye contact occurs, immediately rinse eyes thoroughly with water. If irritation persists, seek medical attention. The material safety data sheet contains more detailed occupational safety information. To report adverse effects, access medical information, or obtain additional product information, call 1-800-428-4441."

The other reason is that ractopamine is not withdrawn at slaughter. In fact, it is begun as the animals near slaughter and started during turkeys' last 14 days. It is actually pumping through their systems as they arrive on the killing floor. Like antibiotics and arsenic, ractopamine is given to turkeys to make them grow faster. It is similar to clenbuterol, a performance enhancing sports drug that is banned in the US, for both humans and livestock, and elsewhere. But ractopamine is also banned in Europe, Taiwan and China, where 1,700 ractopamine "poisonings" were reported and ractopamine-produced pork was seized in 2007. (You have to worry when China calls a food unsafe.)

Ractopamine caused actual riots in Taiwan in 2007 when 3,500 Tawainese pig farmers, some carrying pigs, threw dung and rotten eggs at police and military soldiers over the rumor that a ractopamine ban would be lifted. "Get out, USA pork" and "We refuse to eat pork that contains poisonous ractopamine," they chanted for hours according to Taiwan News.

Reports of ractopamine's lack of safety are not hard to find. In 2009, theEuropean Food Safety Authority (EFSA) termed ractopamine a cardiac stimulator. Ractopamine residues "represent a genuine risk to consumers," wrote a medical journal article, citing "long plasma half-lives, and relatively slow rates of elimination." And a report from Ottawa's Bureau of Veterinary Drugs says that rats fed ractopamine developed a constellation of birth defects like cleft palate, protruding tongue, short limbs, missing digits, open eyelids and enlarged heart.

The FDA is well aware of ractopamine's downside. In 2003, three years after the drug was approved for use in U.S. pigs, the FDA accused its manufacturer, Elanco, of withholding information about ractopamine's "safety and effectiveness" and "adverse animal drug experiences" in a fourteen-page warning letter.

Elanco, said the FDA, failed to report furious pig farmers phoning the company about "dying animals," "downer pigs," animals "down and shaking," "hyperactivity" and "vomiting after eating feed with Paylean," and also suppressed clinical trial information. But, thanks to same probable lobbying that reversed the cephalosporin ban, the FDA approved ractopamine for cattle the following year and for use in turkeys in 2009! Last year, the FDA enlarged the approval for cattle.

Turkey meat produced with ractopamine is not the same as normal meat byElanco's own admission! "Alterations" in muscle were seen in turkeys fed ractopamine like an increase in "mononuclear cell infiltrate and myofiber degeneration," says its 2008 new drug application documents. There was "an increase in the incidence of cysts," and differences, some "significant," in the weight of organs like hearts, kidneys and livers. ("Enlarged hearts" had been seen in test rats feed ractopamine in the Canadian studies.)

Still, ractopamine, like antibiotics, is being hailed as "green" and for lowering the carbon footprint. It has "positive environmental benefits for livestock producers in terms of decreased nitrogen and phosphorus excretions," extols one journal article. It results in a, "reduced amount of total animal waste," unless, of course, you count the manure coming from Big Pharma.

Food Justice Wins We Can Be Thankful for This Year

Whether you’re sitting down to a Tofurky loaf or a bacon-swaddled Turducken this Thanksgiving, now’s a good time to show some gratitude to the country’s food workers and food justice activists who are fighting to keep communities whole while they keep the country fed.

People of color are most likely to live in poor neighborhoods classified as food deserts, where healthful, affordable food is too far out of people’s reach. At every step of the food chain, from farming and processing to distribution and service, there’s a significant wage gap between people of color and white workers. And in all of these spheres, it’s people of color and immigrants who are most likely to work for the lowest wages in the harshest conditions.

It’s against this backdrop that food workers, immigrant rights activists and local communities have been spurred to fight for safe working conditions for workers and sustainable and community-driven pathways to healthy food access. The resistance is as varied as it is ferocious. Here now, a roundup of some vibrant local projects, a few of 2011’s policy wins, and live campaigns in the ongoing fight for just and humane food access and workers rights. As folks dig in to their Thanksgiving meals this year, take a moment to remember to folks who make our dinner possible.

California’s S.B. 126: After an initial crushing veto this summer, California Gov. Jerry Brown came back around this fall with a compromise bill, S.B. 126 to strengthen the organizing rights of farmworkers in the state. The landmark law, signed in October, gives farmworkers more rights to challenge growers in labor disputes. A key provision allows the state Agricultural Labor Relations Board to certify a union when it can determine that employer misconduct threw an election’s results.

Brown produced his compromise package with California State Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg in September, midway through a 167-mile march that 5,000 farmworkers and supporters walked from the farms of Central Valley to the state capitol to demand the governor protect farmworker rights. United Farm Workers President Arturo Rodriguez hailed the law as “the biggest step forward yet in the cause of fair treatment for farm workers.”

Vermont Migrant Farmworker Solidarity Network: Vermont, thanks in part to the organizing of the Vermont Migrant Farmworker Solidarity Network, is celebrating its new Anti-Bias Policing Policy, unveiled by Gov. Peter Shumlin just weeks ago, which ensures that local and state law enforcement make public safety, and not immigration enforcement, their first priority. The policy bars police from questioning someone for the sole purpose of inquiring about their immigration status, and forbids a criminal investigation from being initiated solely on the suspicion that a suspect might be undocumented.

The organization fought for the policy after a member farmworker named Danilo Lopez and his cousin Antonio who both work on local farms were asked for their immigration papers when a state trooper stopped the car they were riding in on their way to work.

“The reality is that what happened to me and Antonio and what happened up on Chris Wagner’s farm in Franklin County, who was was handcuffed and had his employees deported after a 911 call, shouldn’t have happened,” said Lopez, adding that he was “hopeful” about the new policy.

Viet Village Urban Farm in New Orleans East: The Katrina recovery story from the Gulf Coast is as much about renewal as it is about survival. For the Vietnamese community in New Orleans East, recovery included the expansion of what was a family-based community farming tradition and weekly market into the now-vibrant collective community urban farm, called the Viet Village Urban Farm. The Mary Queen of Viet Nam Community Development Corporation acquired 20 acres of property in 2007 to formalize the whole thing. The farm, which includes small family plots and larger commercial plots, also has space for livestock like chicken and goats.

“We’re leveraging the heritage of the Vietnamese seniors here who have actually been growing a lot of microgreens, a lot of the herbs, a lot of the fresh vegetables in their own backyards,” said James Bui, a special projects manager with the MQVN CDC.

The project was awarded an Excellence Award from the American Society of Landscape Architects in 2008, in part for the organic farming practices, like integrated pest management, cover cropping and composting that were designed into the space.

Urban farmers persevere in California: In its heyday, the South Central Farm in South Central Los Angeles was considered one of the largest urban farms in the country. Community members grew chayote, chamomile, avocadoes, sugarcane, a veritable rainbow of bean varieties. But when a developer and the city organized to kick out the community who’d been cultivating the 14 acres, finally winning in 2006, a chapter of the farm’s storied history closed, and another began.

Last summer, farmers committed to feeding their community flipped the switch on new property up in Bakersfield, where they’d leased new land to begin growing again. The worker and farmer-owned co-op now operates on 85 acres of donated, unused land in Buttonwillow, California, and serves both L.A. and Bakersfield with CSA boxes and weekly stands at local farmers markets.

Coalition of Immokalee Workers: And we’re giving our last round of thanks to folks leading the ongoing fight for justice and fair compensation for farmworkers, like the Coalition of Immokalee Workers. Their latest campaign, taking on Trader Joe’s and Publix supermarkets, urges these grocery giants to take seriously the rights of the workers who pick the produce they sell in their stores. From Oakland to Trader Joe’s headquarters in Monrovia, California, folks have been turning out to demand a penny more per pound of tomatoes that farmworkers pick. Currently, farmworkers make just 45 cents for every 32-pound bucket they pick.

Reprinted with permission of Colorlines.com. Sign up to receive Colorlines Direct, a weekly email digest of key stories on Colorlines.com. You'll get award-winning news from our multi-racial team of writers covering hot topics and a broad range of issues from a racial justice perspective.